The Last Straw  Just another day at the US Mint in the Pegasus Galaxy

Eric Vought

9 June 2011

A Stargate Atlantis fan-ction. STARGATE ATLANTIS and related marks are trademarks of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Other trademarks owned by their respective holders. This work may be redistributed with attribution but may not be sold. 1.3 (PDF Info and Bookmarks)

Special Agent Mark Kinman, United States Secret Service, put the Dodge Ram into 4-wheel drive as he pulled away from the Dancing Bear Inn and Pub. The GSA rate for reimbursing a lunch on the go in these parts was a buck thirty-seven. The Ram's inline-six diesel took the hill beautifully, bouncing and jouncing over the ruts made by ox-carts and the local horse-like "pogs." The AM/FM radio did not work out here, nor did the GPS, but for one million, two-hundred eighty-eight thousand apiece, the biodiesel-fueled trucks did have a jack to plug in his iPod, an in-dash DHD, and a thirty-caliber machine-gun with undercarriage ARG. Getting the trucks to the Grnhall (or as some of the employees called it, Grungehole) mine, a little over three million light-years, had been 99 percent of the vehicle price tag. They could t through through the anulus of a stargate (with the mirrors folded in) but a whole eet of pickups disappearing into Cheyenne mountain would have been a bit hard to explain and getting them into Stargate Command's Gate Room would have been even more dicult. Only the SGC's stargate at Cheyenne Mountain could dial the Atlantis outpost across the galactic void. The solution had been to drive the vehicles out to the middle of nowhere, load them into the launch bay of one of the US Air Force's X-303 interstellar cruisers, spend weeks ferrying them to a planet at the fringe of the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy, and then drive them a few

hundred light-years further via the event horizon of an articial stable wormhole, the stargate. This probably violated the manufacturer's warranty in any number of ways, but the Dodge dealership was not told about many of the things the US Treasury Department did with its vehicles these days, including running them o of biodiesel esterized from the local Gava bean. The Treasury was reasonably pleased with their trucks: with regular maintenance and a carefully chosen route, the ecient diesel would get you about eight-hundred light-years to the gallon. Today he was pulling a trailer out to a nearby community of de-Wraithied Wraith to buy a full load of straw bales for use in above-ground construction at the mint. A small bag of US Silver Liberty Dollars, otherwise known as Silver American Eagles or SAE, sat in the center console between Agent Kinman and his passenger. To a casual observer, the silver eagles would have been indistinguishable from those which could be purchased in any coin shop in the US in 20-coin plastic tubes identical except for the odd little mint mark that is. A magnifying glass, a very high security clearance, and a need-to-know hard to come by even in raried government circles would reveal the mark to be the Pegasus DIG gate symbol. Quite a few of the new coins were in fact circulating back on Earth, mostly in Chinese and Russian bank vaults. The whole problem had started with increased trade

between the members of the international Atlantis Expedition and the varied local human inhabitants of the Pegasus DIG. The locals' culture and economies were highly varied and the humans from Earth (or `Tau'ri' as many of them now thought of themselves) were still proving themselves. Brokering deals for food against small amounts of C4 for stump removal notwithstanding, it was often convenient to be able to use some durable commodity for uid trade and easy accounting. The International Oversight Administration or IOA beancounters liked paying for their beans with something recordable as a simple number rather than assessing the fair market value of Nerf footballs and Zippo lighters a million parsecs from home. Paper currency backed by the Full faith and credit of the United States or that of any other Earth nation just did not get the locals' interest. Enter the Silver and Gold Eagle (and the British Sovereign for a time). They were relatively compact, easy to use in trade, and of immediately identiable value to most of the natives. The dierence between their face value and their market value (a one oz 0.999 ne Silver Eagle was stamped with a one dollar face value) also gave the bean counters opportunities for creative accounting, so the US Air Force began transporting small amounts on each visit to Atlantis. When the IOA began implementing its End Game strategy to protectively scatter Tau'ri outposts and resource acquisition all over the Pegasus and the Milky Way galaxies, the demand for gold and

silver coin dramatically increased. So, the same solution as the US used during the San Francisco gold rush was proposed: let a contractor establish a local mint, let the locals bring in their unwrought silver and gold and trade them for nished, stamped and measured coinage. Once the facility is up and fully operational, buy the mint for the Treasury. When Grnhall was discovered, the operation ratcheted up to another level. The planet had a large, readily accessible deposit of electrum, a naturally occuring alloy of gold and silver, within an easy drive of the stargate. What's more, the Wraith had at some point started a mine shaft (they used electrum nanolamints in extruding organic power conduit) and abandoned it after the Wraith overseer had allowed the local human miners to unionize. The miners and the overseer were all sucked dry by the inspecting Wraith queen who never bothered to resta. Now, Tok'ra tunnel building technology allowed them to open new shafts and produce a steady stream of high quality ore. The new ore not only eliminated the expensive cost of cargoing coinage from Earth, it quickly became a prot center in its own right. Most Earth cruisers returned from Atlantis empty. It was only good cents to begin lling For the US, it allowed the Air their holds with precious metals and other commodities for the return journey. Force to pay Russia to rent its stargate for use in the SGC (long story) and begin paying down its imploding debt

to China. Several other IOA countries now had facilities of various kinds across the far-ung stargate network. The Tok'ra technology allowed the mint to easily excavate and nish tunnels from pre-patterned templates, including conference rooms and living facilities. As the facility grew, however, most people, especially Pegasusnative contractors, preferred to live above-ground. Strawbale construction proved ideal both in matching local ambience and in dealing well with blistering summer heat and harsh winters on Grnhall. That is where the Wraith De-Wraithied Wraith, actually, or DRRs as they were known in ocial documents (I know Wraith doesn't start with an `R,' but tell that to the Air Force General who brokered the treaty...) came in. A group of them operated a large agricultural facility an easy wormhole away. Although these nefarious demons have been modied by Dr. Keller's retrovirus they no longer sucked the very lives out of human beings with a mere touch and seemed to have an inexplicable fondness for prune juice the DRR's were still very scary, grouchy monsters with a complex and barely comprehensible legal system recognized under the treaty. * * * The evening was getting on as the truck came around a bend into the stargate clearing. For a moment, the low sun's angry blue pinprick glared bright through the center of the stargate anulus, apparently inspecting them and blinking its approval. At the same time, a light

came on in the dashboard's DHD (or Dial-Home-Device) as the gate's own DHD recognized the presence of the truck. The Tau'ri had also modied many of the gates to store-and-forward email and other data as outbound connections were made to other planets. Mark's passenger, Special Agent Dale Hershaw, quickly punched a set of coordinates into the dash-DHD, blue chevrons lit up on the gate itself, and then... Mark's heart always skipped a beat at this stage, no matter how many times he saw it happen: a hole was torn in the local time-space continuum and then ruthlessly chained by the mechanism of the aeons-old Alteran-built stargate, resulting in the Ka-Woosh! of a dazzling energy vortex roiling forth toward the truck to devour it whole and then placidly settling back into the ring structure like a rippling pool of water stubbornly stuck sideways. Another dash light came on indicating that there was new email and the truck started rolling forward again, entering the puddle, demolecularized piece by piece, stued into a tunnel across light-years of space, and nally materialized at their destination in what appeared to be early afternoon. As he consulted the directions briey and began driving to the DRR facility, Dale pulled out a smartphone and began going through her email. her sister: Dale, She had one from

Finally got your package. Jake has been going through books all day trying to nd out what kind of fossils are in the rocks you sent. The Post Oce really screwed things up: they claimed a `postage due' of twelve TRILLION $ !!! and would not let me have it until some guy named Tilk? showed up and held the postmaster upside down. Anyway, it would have been nice to get a call :-( I don't care if you're in another GALAXY, I'm sure you can nd a phone somewhere. It's not like you're guarding the President or something. The Air and Space Musuem is opening a new display next month on whether life exists on other planets. I know you love that stu and Jake could go with you (hint, hint). Take care. Watch out for those ruggedly-

handsome foreign bar-hoppers, some of them are real animals. * * * They nally turned into the DRR settlement, driving past rows of what might have been bulbous agricultural equipment, including a new crop of just-sprouted tractors, and into a barn yard. Several ex-wraith youth were chucking straw bales out of a loft and loading them into a very similar truck and trailer belonging to the British

Special Air Service (SAS). Mark and Dale got out of the truck, taking the pouch from the center console. A click on the key dongle locked the doors and energized the defense eld. A quick question resulted in a nger pointed to a nearby outbuilding. Some jibes indicated that the youths thought Dale looked 'tasty' and a 'dish'. Wraith got a lot of amusement out of Earth idioms. One of the managers was just closing the deal with them over a tankard of prune juice when he looked up suddenly, One of my accountants tells me that you still owe us money for the other load of straw, the ex-Wraith said angrily, presumably having been so informed over the psychic network such creatures possessed. "That's the British government. We're with the United States Treasury. We've always paid up front." *** That went well, Dale said,  We're the United States Treasury, she mimicked, in a disturbingly good rendition of James Earl Jones. They were in Wraith `holding cells,' about the size of a phone booth and held rmly with sticky organic webbing. The pouch of silver was gone, along with their sidearms, the dongle which deactivated the defense eld on the truck, and the last tin of Altoids in the galaxy. The defense eld was a South African device, actually, designed to stop car jackers with an 80,000 volt jolt. A little bit of Goa'uld technology added to the mix made it powerful enough to stop Wraith and very hard to disarm. The

The Treasury department had begun installing them in armored cars on Earth and gured they might as well go into the Pegasus DIG truck eet. Remind me to throttle the next Brit I see, Mark said wearily, still trying to reach his pocket knife without needing to dislocate his shoulder. You might want to wait to see if he cuts us lose, rst, she says. What? he looked up, dropping the pocket knife he had just managed to get hold of to see a commando of the Special Air Service standing in front of them with a carbine aimed back down the corridor, You! This is your fault! Yeah, well, sorry about that. We ran into a sort of a nancial problem. Bloody nuisance, really. Nuisance? You're not the one taped to the wall. We came back as soon as we found out you two had showed up. Figured you'd get into some trouble. ' And you wanted your truck back. And we wanted our truck back, but we weren't going to leave you Yanks to the mercy of the Toddies. Toddies? Mark asked. That's what we call 'em. 'Todd' was the rst... You know what, we don't really need to know, Dale cut in, We just call them DRRs. Dee-Are-Are...? Oh, that's really silly. You know, `Wraith' doesn't actually start with... Can we get out of here? Mark cut him o again.

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Right-o, Chap. Don't get your panties in a bunch, the commando cut them out of the webbing and gestured down the corridor. How are you planning on getting out of the facility? Dale asked. Us in our lorry and you in yours, he replied, My partner is guarding the road to make sure they won't stop us leaving. An argument ensued over the dongle for our truck. Getting our stu back from the warden was not part of the plan. We'll just have to take your truck back to Grnhall, Mark said nally. You can't take our truck. It's your fault we lost ours, Dale said reasonably, Besides, your truck is already loaded with the straw we paid for. We saw it when we came in. Ah, but we've got guns and you haven't. the commando pointed out. Mark held out the pocket knife he had retrieved from the oor of the compartment. The commando pointed the carbine at Mark, And just what did you have a mind to do with the rabbitsticker? Nothing; Mark said, truthfully, as Dale clubbed him over the head from behind. *** Back at the mint, Special Agent Kinman was doing paperwork when the British consul arrived, followed shortly

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by a delegation from the DRRs. The British wanted their `lorry' back (and the commando we had left in a holding cell), the Wraith wanted to be paid, did not want to return the Treasury's truck, and both the DRRs and the Brits wanted Dale and Mark prosecuted for one thing or another. It all had the potential to get very ugly but for an IOA lawyer who happened to be wandering through. He invoked treaty language requiring the use of a neutral arbiter for any dispute involving capital punishment (practically any Wraith law was a capital oense). The Toddies agreed that the IOA could be considered `neutral' for the case. It was several days later that Special Agent Hershaw came to report on the matter. Well, there's good news and bad news, she said, perching on the corner of his desk and kicking her legs. The good news is that we have an agreement and it does not involve either of us in the custody of the `Toddies'. That's good news, Agent Kinman said, not looking up from his Panasonic Toughbook, All right, what's the bad news? The bad news is that the Wraith have a custom of dining on the `neutral arbiter' to seal any decision. it into their being or some such. Mark shrugged, Barbaric custom, that. I don't know that I could stomach lawyer, personally. It helps them to `internalize the agreement' and incorporate

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She got up from the desk and started toward the oce door, Well, if you change your mind, your portion is in the inrmary. Mark stopped typing and looked up,  My portion ? Of Woolsey, she said.